


Aradia: Bide Your Time

by BlameMyMuses



Series: Apotheosis [6]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Homestuck
Genre: Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 00:46:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7868569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlameMyMuses/pseuds/BlameMyMuses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aradia is an anomaly, and the Amestrian government has an unfortunate interest in anomalies. It's okay, though, because Aradia has played this game before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aradia: Bide Your Time

You remember dying. You remember being killed, more to the point, by the woman in military cerulean. She killed you because she’s a remorseless bitch, but also because it was orders.

 

You don’t know why it was orders, just know you were the one to suffer the fallout.

 

Mostly, you remember the music. A soft, gentle melody, persistent and not as comforting as your subconscious probably meant it to be.

 

The thing is, you know you’ve died before. You know what you’re doing. They have you killed, because your mom had had her mother’s white hair and red eyes, and even though you take after your father, there is still too much red in your irises.

 

History is doomed to repeat itself.

 

They shoot your mom, the bitch shoots you, and they think they know what’s going to happen next—you’ll rot away into obscurity and no one will ever think about you again, just some nameless half-Ishvalan mongrel, and that’s that. That’s what they want to happen, because that’s what  _always_ happens. 

 

Instead, you take death by the horns, and don’t do what they want.

 

_Never_ do what they want, you tell yourself, and you rise up, laughing, while the other you chokes on her own blood.

 

***

 

So you die.

 

And it’s painless and sterile like it wasn’t last time, because now you’re a lab rat, just some dumb cloned sheep. They wanted to see what happened to the rest of you, and never realized that, actually, you’re toying with them back. What one of you knows, you all know. They copied you over and over again, bringing you to the brink of death so another would rise, and then keeping you  _both_ going. There are twelve of you currently. 

 

With every copy, they bring you closer to being able to free yourself.

 

An injection, nice and neat, and you make the most of the mess they’ve made for themselves.

 

You were made to clean up others’ messes.

 

_Maid_ .

 

You’re laughing as you die.

 

***

 

You reach out with arms made of time and willpower, and find a body to share. You’re a ghost. You escaped them, only the second time you managed to finish dying before they could revive you. You’re a ghost, and some people are better about sharing their things than others. Last time they’d killed one of you, they’d caught your spirit and trapped you in some horrible metal body, nowhere near as advanced as the  _last_ metal body you’d had…

 

With death comes a piece of clarity. A little more clarity with every death. You think it didn’t use to work like that, but you’re not complaining.

 

It doesn’t even hurt, after all.

 

***

 

The next time they kill one of your selves (you are twenty-four minds now, in various states of existence), you stick around and watch them, little more than a breath of cool air at the back of a neck. You cackle every time you see one of them shiver.

 

***

 

They refer to you as “the RAM Project” and you’ve never been one to shy away from unpleasant truths, so you watch from a corner as they kill another one of you. She can obviously see you, where you’re waiting, and the alchemists and scientists who have her on the table look unnerved when she gives you a stunted wave with a manacled hand.

 

“It’s more interesting on my side,” you tell her. You don’t mean it to be comforting (isn’t there an old Xing saying about interesting times?) but she knows that of course, and wouldn’t expect comfort anyway.

 

You come from a harder place, even for someone like you, whose Ishvalan heritage is as plain as the eyes in your skull. You get overlooked, because your hair is dark, and your skin not the same dusty brown, but there have always been those who cared enough to look, and you’ve never been the sort to pretend away facts.

 

One of those people who looked too much had turned you into the military. You’d done one too many odd things, maybe, said one too many rebellious statements, and so now you were a permanent resident in Laboratory 5.

 

They keep one of you in every cell block…

 

…even the one with Karkat, though they don’t know it. What is one more ghost to the cacophony that lives in his veins after all?

 

It’s the safest hiding place you’ve found yet. Even Karkat didn’t recognize you.

 

***

 

You are many, you are legion, you are…

 

You are a little girl, trapped in a metal body.

 

You’re a laugh and a spark in someone’s ear.

 

You’re a soul, lost to the greater purpose (the Greatest, some would say, but you know better).

 

You’re something new, and the assholes who kill you again and again had no idea just what they were getting into when they decided to fuck with you.

 

You're just waiting for a sign.

 

***  
  


You get an unexpected one.

 

***

 

The you across from cell 22 can’t swallow so the you in cell 161 swallows instead, and the you following the blue bitch through the hallways of the next-door prison does an abrupt about-face and follows someone else instead.

 

He’s all blue, too, darker, eyes a true navy like they never had a chance to be in his last life. Your specter flits after him, and down below—far, far below—all of your other avatars turn their eyes upward.

 

It’s like the first time you’d seen Sollux, or Tavros, or Nepeta— _any_ of the others—all your gears and coils and nerves burning like live-wires. 

 

Equius. That’s seven of you confirmed as Fifth Lab experiments (if you count yourself only once), and two confirmed outside, as members of the military.

 

You wonder if any of your humans made it, and hope they did. Only time will tell, after all.

 

***

 

He can’t see you, but you haunt him for days, and eventually follow him home.

 

He lives off-base, in an apartment, and his living room walls are covered in tasteful wallpaper, a piece of art here and there. His furniture is all class, well-cared for.

 

His bedroom is a wreck. One entire wall is covered over in newspaper clippings and city maps, and there are strings strung between pins, and circled areas, and X’s through most of them.

 

When you drifted closer, you saw the newspapers were all about some kidnapping the year before.

 

You know enough about Nepeta’s background to realize he’s looking for her. But he is newly enlisted, no contacts, no resources, and still too young to be taken seriously, and anything you might do to help would probably just put him in danger.

 

Whatever feelings you may still harbor (ill-will not least among them), you do not wish him dead.

 

***

 

You keep an eye on him, but other matters take precedence.

 

Karkat breaks out.

 

He takes one of your dead selves with him when he goes.

 

And you realize the pieces are all finally starting to come together. Someone wound the watch, and all the gears are turning again, and all your friends are finally beginning to wake up.

 

***

 

“…Aradia.”

 

You turn your silver face towards Cell 22. You’ve never told him your name. You wanted to see how long it would take him to remember.

 

“Sollux,” you say, and wish you could smile. All your other faces are beaming, but he can’t see them, only you.

 

His left eye glints between the bars, and you think he can see you after all.

 

“AA. Aradia…” he laughs, low and crazed and so _relieved_. “Let’s bust the fuck out of here.”

 

“I thought you’d never ask.”

 

You have an army waiting, after all.

 

 


End file.
